Jack White
Lazaretto
Third Man Records / Columbia
It’s been
interesting to watch Jack White’s evolution as an artist over the past couple
of decades, from a greasy-haired blues punk to the suave and sonically
sophisticated gent he is today.
As he’s evolved,
so too has his reputation grown; an in-demand producer, label head and
collaborator, White has become a part of modern music’s fabric. His work with
the seminal White Stripes, The Raconteurs and Dead Weather (along with stints
with all from Alicia Keys to Neil Young), have served to heighten his standing
to a level not many achieve over an entire career, let alone a mere twenty
years. The success of his rather belated solo debut, Blunderbuss (2012), is simply icing on the cake.
Which is why it’s
all the more interesting to listen to Lazaretto,
his second foray into the ‘solo’ world, a world where there aren’t too many
places to hide – this is where White is properly on display, where one can
truly evaluate and, hopefully, appreciate his continuing evolution.
Lazaretto is an interesting beast however, in that it’s not quite sure what it
is. Is it an impossibly crunchy, staccato-riffed semi-rap like the title track?
Is it a lethargic blues/rock stretch out, complete with junky piano as ‘High
Ball Stepper’ suggests? Or is it a fiddle and pedal steel-led country lament,
with a slight pop bent, a la ‘Temporary Ground’ (with superb, lilting backing
vocals from Lillie Mae Rische)?
It’s not a
comfortable listen by any stretch, it’s more an adventure, a blindfolded wander
through a clutch of jumbled rooms, each more mystifying and cluttered than the
last. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s increasingly been White’s MO
to stretch boundaries, to challenge people’s perceptions of existing genres,
and to that end, with Lazaretto he’s
succeeded.
And maybe that’s
all he needs to do – present new ideas with which people can do what they will.
For someone of White’s standing, this is indeed acceptable, although perhaps
not without delusions of grandeur – many may yearn for the simplicity of those
early years when it was all about the up and down fuzz and grind.
Overall, Lazaretto is much more a collection of
11 songs than it is an album, which
at first seems odd for a nu-traditionalist like White. But then again, these 11
songs wouldn’t fit on any other album, even if surrounded by similarly styled
tunes. Confusing, no? Well, that’s just how Jack White likes it, as his
continued evolution suggests.
3/5
Samuel J. Fell
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